Lily Aldrin
Lily Aldrin is the wife of Marshall Eriksen and the best friend of Robin Scherbatsky, as well as one of Ted Mosby's closest friends, having known him and Marshall since college. She works as a kindergarten teacher and is also an amateur painter. She is virtually incapable of keeping secrets, with a few exceptions. In , Lily is found to be pregnant, and she gives birth in to a boy named Marvin. Character Background Childhood There isn't much said about Lily's early life, but Lily grew up in New York City. Her childhood was shaped by the horrible environment that her parents raised her in. Lily's mother is an extreme feminist, who worked two jobs and refused to buy her an easy bake oven. She had a stay-at-home dad who was distracted by his dream of creating the next great American board game, therefore constantly neglecting Lily. After a while, she even gave him the You're dead to me look. Young Lily also took ballet and gymnastics ( ). It's also known that Lily owned a dog named Bean. Teenage Years In high school, Lily had a goth-like appearance. In the ninth grade, she accidentally passed gas loudly while in class. She blamed Michael Sasser, the boy next to her who was just getting close to becoming one of the cool kids after joining the baseball team. After she blamed him, Michael gained the nickname, "Gasser", and was teased so much that he switched schools. Lily would later consider this to be one of her biggest regrets. ( ).She was in a committed relationship with Scooter. She technically may have lost her virginity to him, but as Robin puts it "he didn't dive in, but he got in the shallow end". Since the two of them had different plans after high school, she broke up with Scooter at their senior prom. Future College Lily attended Wesleyan University, where she majored in art. During a freshman floor party, she made out with guy named Colin. She got so drunk that she completely forgot who she hooked up with and referred to Colin as "too much tongue guy". She would later meet Marshall Eriksen and Ted Mosby. After Marshall helped her set up her stereo in her dorm room, the two of them started dating. When Lily first turned on the stereo, Good Feeling by was playing. The two of them went on to fall in love and lose their virginity to each other, and Good Feeling became 'their song'. She and Marshall also spent their first Valentine's Day together watching the movie, , which became their Valentine's Day tradition. Lily also developed a loathing hatred for Ted's on-again, off-again girlfriend, Karen. She and Marshall hated Karen because she was constantly cheating on Ted and when she acted sophisticated, she came off as obnoxious. But the biggest reason she hated Karen was because she walked in on her painting a nude portrait of Marshall and Karen lingered and stared at Marshall's penis. Sometime during her college career, Lily did a study abroad program in Paris for a semester. General Background She is married to Marshall Eriksen and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Lily also has dreams of being an artist. She also has a huge debt problem because of her impulsive buying practices. She is able to hide this from Marshall until they apply for a mortgage. She cannot keep a secret, and is a very caring person and will much of the time do thankless acts for the good of her friends. She is also known to have to pee often, as shown during the episode . She met Marshall and Ted in college and almost immediately started dating Marshall. They were together for about nine years and engaged for almost a year when Lily broke up with Marshall to move to San Fransisco to concentrate on her art. She was there for a summer and came back to NYC but Marshall was too hurt that they stayed separated for another couple months afterward. They eventually patched things up and got married. They moved into an apartment in which they do not know at first stands for Down Wind of the Sewage Treatment Plant. They want children, but for awhile are scared so they did not try. Later Lily and Marshall make a bet that once they have seen the doppelganger of every member of their gang they will start trying for a child. By the summer of 2010 they have seen all but Barney's doppelganger when Lily sees what she thinks his doppelganger (it was not). The rest of the gang knew this meant she was ready for a child and let her believe it. She doesn't like the word "moist", and is lactose intolerant. She has a very bad aim. Personality Despite her small, cute-like appearance, Lily is far from innocent. She is known to be an extremely sexual person. Throughout the series, Lily and Marshall have been shown announcing to the rest of the gang how proud the two are of their sexual history, which usually ends with them giving each other high-fives. Lily also been shown to be curious about other people's romantic/sex lives, specifically Ted's and Barney's. With Barney, Lily has asked Robin about his sex preferences, specifically if he liked to use toys in the bed. With Ted, Lily has taken it upon herself to make him break up with women that she didn't approve of since their time in college together, especially if they didn't pass her "Front Porch Test", where she would imagine what the group would look like as elderly people sitting on the front porch of their shared beach house. She could be labeled as manipulative and selfish in that over the course of the series, if she does not approve of something, she will go out of her way to change it, even if it's nothing to do with her, as she has demonstrated by locking Robin and Barney in the room together in , where she forced them to have "the talk" whereupon if they didn't, they weren't allowed to come out of the room. Being a kindergarten teacher, Lily has a warped sense of justice. She has a tendency to punish people that she doesn't approve in a similar fashion to how she would punish the children in her class even though they're fully grown adults. Lily is even willing to perform "punishments" that break the law, she stole a pair of pants because the store's sales clerk was rude to Robin. One of Lily's most notable traits that the entire gang has noticed is that she loves gossip and is almost incapable of keeping a secret. She has shown to to reveal secrets within minutes after promising to keep them secret as shown when she told Ted Robin's opinion of him after their first date. The longest secret that she ever kept was her shopping addiction, which was eventually revealed to the rest of the gang in Season 3. Lily has the tendency to turn to shopping whenever she is upset whether the problem has to do with her relationships or even receiving a high credit card bill. Ted also has noticed that when she is upset she will peel the labels off water bottles.She also has the bad habit of chewing too loudly as shown in . Relationships Romantic Interests Marshall Eriksen Marshall and Lily have been a couple since their freshmen year of college. They lost their virginity to each other in college (they originally were going to wait until new years day) while Ted was on the top bunk of the bed. After being together nine years they were engaged. Lily broke off their engagement to go to an art fellowship in San Francisco. Barney then went to her and told her about how terrible Marshal was and told her to come back for him. When she returned and asked Marshall for his forgiveness in season two, he rejected her at first. There was a brief period of time where they couldn't be around each other. When Lily interrupted Marshal's date, they got back together. They then continued their engagement, and pledged to sleep separately for the remainder of their engagement. They couldn't even do that, because of how much they loved each other. Marshal and Lily later got married. Four years later, they decided to try to have a baby, but realized it required too much responsibility and postponed it. In the season 6 finale, they find out that Lily is pregnant, and their son Marvin is born in The Magician's Code Part 1. Scooter Scooter (also known as Bill) and Lily were a couple in high school. She broke up with him during their senior prom, and broke his heart. Scooter is apparently still in love with Lily even though she is married to Marshall, and has him on "the hook" going so far as to work in the canteen at her work. Scooter was also present at their wedding trying to win Lily back, but was escorted out by Brad. Friendships Ted Mosby Ted and Lily have been friends since their freshmen year of college. Ted first heard of Lily when Marshall told him how they met, and she met Ted in person when he was on the phone with Karen, begging her to take him back. The three of them became closer when Ted invited Lily into his roommate photo with Marshall. Robin Scherbatsky Lily and Robin are best friends. Their relationship as best friends started when Robin just met Lily and wanted to have Thai food in the flashback confession in . They spilled the food in the car and Lily worried that Marshall would be mad at them. They decided to lie and say that a drunk man broke the window and puked inside the car. Since then, they've been best friends. Barney Stinson In Season 2, when Lily couldn't stand to stay in her new apartment anymore, she begged Barney to let her stay at his apartment, which would be the very first time Barney's apartment is shown in the show. Barney starts using Lily, pretending to be his wife, to scare off his one-night-stands - and they start getting closer. They now have a kind of brother-sister relationship. Barney confesses to Lily about his interest in Robin and other information, like Lily knows that Barney wanted to become a violinist when he was young. Lily is however mostly not good at keeping Barney's secrets. Family Notes and Trivia *Lily was not seen in season four episodes , , and , due to Alyson Hannigan's pregnancy. *In Barney's blog (The Slap Stops Here!), Barney states that Lily's full name is Lilith. However, he also says her last name is Eriksen (nee Aldrin). Between the fact that Lily's last name is Aldrin and the fact that Barney has been known to improvise his friends' full names when he doesn't know them ( ), it's unclear if Lily actually is short for Lilith. *Lily's résumé says that she speaks Italian fluently.Her résumé is seen for a brief moment in . *In , it is shown that whenever Lily feels guilty, she peels the label of bottles, similar to how Ted peels off the label of beer bottles whenever he is nervous. *Lily could be bisexual, this could be proven because she said in one episode that she wants to have a lesbian experience, and that she told Robin she had a great ass. She also admitted to having some romantic dreams about Robin. It stated that whenever she drink martinis, she wants to make out with Robin and have dreams about her when she's pregnant. ( ) *Lily is the second well-known character of HIMYM (the first is Barney Stinson) as Hannigan received some award and nomination for her appearance as Lily. This is also ironic as Harris (Barney) and Hannigan are the last billed of the main cast (Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders with Neil Patrick Harris and Alyson Hannigan). *In it was revealed that Lily chews very loudly, even when she is eating cotton candy. *While Alyson Hannigan was starring in , her character stated that she once wrote Doogie Howser, M.D. fan fiction. Doogie Howser was portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris, Alyson's now costar. *When the character Lily is pregnant on the show, the actress who plays Lily (Alyson Hannigan) is pregnant in real life. *In both of Alyson Hannigan's most well known television roles, her characters have been named after plants. Willow (after the tree) on , and obviously Lily (the flower) on How I Met Your Mother. References External Links * * Category:The gang Category:Characters Category:Wesleyan University